My brother came through pretty big when it came to my birthday. I received no less than five packages with cards inside that were a lot of help my 1980’s wantlists and some hockey starter sets to boot. I’m not going to post them all at once, as it would end up a post of epic proportions that you’d probably have to take a nap halfway through (and I hope that would be different then what you do now).

This is the last half of the package that I actually opened before my birthday. Bask in the awesome!

I’ve always viewed completing the 1980 Topps set as a gateway to the collecting in the 70’s. My master plan was to go back year by year until I completed the 1952 set. At this rate, that will occur sometime in 2076.

I was surprised to see that Mike Torrez had some MVP quality years back in the 70’s. By the time I started collecting, he was more of a back-end rotation type. Then in 1984 he threw the pitch that altered Dickie Thon’s career, and he’s been known for that ever since.

Evans was a guy that also seemed to have his best days behind him in 1981. Then, in 1985 at the age of thirty-eight, he became the oldest player ever to lead the majors in home runs.

And when I think that card is thirty years old… egad. I guess I could take solace in Evans and his awesome thirty-eight, but I’m not thinking I’ll be hitting forty home runs when I get that old. I’d still buy a box of this stuff and rip it today if they didn’t go for around a C-note.

In 1984, Tom Hume was coming off his worst year in the majors since his rookie debut. 1984 would be even worse. Hume was still recovering from a knee injury he sustained at the end of 1982, a year he went to the All Star Game. With ERA’s near 5.00, Tom earned the affectionate nickname “Boom-Boom,” an homage to the sound of the home team’s fireworks after Hume would give up a home run.

Those aren’t clouds behind Hume there. It’s smoke.

I also was able to put a big dent in my 1986 Fleer set as well. I noticed there are really two kinds of ’86 Fleer cards, those that are posed like Mr. Collins there…

…or an action shot, typically reserved for the better players in the set. Either the better known players didn’t want to pose, or Fleer tried to spice up the set with this. Most of the action shots, however, are blurry and from a distance, like the Trammell card pictured here, which actually makes them look worse.

I’m now down to needing twenty-six of these, and it would be awesome if each card left featured a player whose last name started with a different letter of the alphabet. Then I could post on the ABC’s of ’86 Fleer. Wasn’t Paul Zuvella still playing then?

And on a side note, I’ve finally begun my long-planned assault on other bloggers’ wantlists. It’s a slow process, but I’ve already shipped one package and hope to work out a couple more by the end of the night. I’m going to make this blog thing work if it kills me.